Chapter 8: Rule One

The lights burned white across the hall, and neither of us pulled away.

Then Ben's hand slid out from under my hair, slowly, and my neck felt cold where it had been.

I sat up.

"Rule one," I said. My voice came out rough with sleep. "No touching."

"You were on my floor."

"You were on your floor too. You lifted me."

"I did." He pushed one hand through his hair. "That was a storm exception."

"Is that in the terms?"

"It's in them now."

"You're making rules up as you go, husband."

"I'm a salvage man. I make everything up as I go."

I laughed, a short wild sound, and he looked at me and did not look away.

Downstairs he made coffee while I stood at the window and watched the sound go from gray to silver.

The storm had stripped the dock of everything loose. A gull sat on the nearest piling and glared at us.

"Can I ask you something?" Ben said.

I turned.

"Not about the crash. I know the rule." He held out a mug. "About the check."

I took the coffee.

"Two hundred and fifty thousand dollars," he said. "You'd been out of prison for six hours and had no coat. Why?"

I held the cup with both hands.

Nobody had asked me that.

Everybody had told me what I should have done, or what they would have done, or what a smart woman would have done.

"Because the last thing I signed for Carter cost three years," I said.

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